---

I. THE CREDIBILITY OF THIS DOCTRINE.

1. The resurrection of the dead is not in any way incompatible with the power of God, by which, according to the representation of the Scriptures, it is to be accomplished. Where, we ask, a few years ago, were the particles which now exist, organised and animated in the person of any individual in this assembly? Were they not as scattered as ever death and the grave can make them?

2. However great and amazing as an event, the resurrection of the dead is not dissimilar to many of those renewals which we witness in nature. Doth God take care for flowers? and will He abandon man, His last, His fairest, His most loved workmanship, to an everlasting winter in the tomb?

3. The resurrection of the dead is indispensable in order to give rectitude and perfection to the retributive government of God.

4. Stupendous as this event must be, it has already in some instances taken place. How big with instruction, how confirmatory of our faith, are those examples recorded by the evangelists!

5. The resurrection of the dead forms one of the leading and peculiar doctrines of the new covenant dispensation, taught by many unequivocal, incontrovertible words, as well as by historical record.

II. THE CONSOLATION WHICH THIS DOCTRINE IS CALCULATED TO AFFORD. This great truth, ever delightful and consolatory to reflect upon, is especially so on two very solemn and important occasions.

1. The first of these is the loss of our friends by death. Is there in this assembly a mother who, in the course of providence, has been called to part for a term of years with her little son, to be apprenticed or educated far from home, or perhaps to go on the long, long voyage. It was not without a struggle of feeling, not without many tears, that she could take the parting look at the lad, although she knew that his absence was both for his and for her advantage. During that absence many a thought, many a wish, is sent after him; the months and the weeks are counted; and their slow advance is cheered by the reflection he will return, and every day brings it nigher. At length the day arrives; the youth enters his parent's dwelling, and stands fair and full in his mother's view. What that mother feels as her eye wanders in ecstasy over his figure — so much taller, so much stouter, so much improved! what that mother feels as in transports of tender delight she presses her offspring to her bosom! that or something like that! that or something more pure, more exquisite, more Divine, is what we shall feel when in the day of God we shall meet with those who are gone before, and meet to part no more!

2. The second occasion on which the strong and holy consolations of this doctrine will doubtless be required is the season of our own death. With a conscience washed in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and a soul firmly believing His resurrection, and ours through Him, we shall be prepared to meet sickness, and death, and the grave, with sweet composure and holy triumph. Oh! grave! I have misconceived thy character! Since Jesus has descended into thy dreary regions, the passage to them is smoothed, they are illumined, they are sanctified. Oh! how is thy character changed! Thine is now the sweetest pillow on which the wearied head ever reclined! Thine the safest retreat till this storm be over-past! Soon wilt thou faithfully return the inestimable deposit, and return it to "glory, and honour, and immortality."

(James Bromley.)

---

---

KJV: Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?

WEB: Why is it judged incredible with you, if God does raise the dead?